1. 4.4 MILLION BARRELS LATER
The massive gush of oil that started on April 20 and ran for days was a disaster, obviously,but it was also a grimly informative experiment. In its wake we are learning all kinds of lessons about deep-drilling technology, about the environment and ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, and about the future direction of our energy supply.It may be hard to appreciate now, but started as a banner year for oil. e world’s energy giants were on the move, dispatching their sharpest petroleum engineers, sophisticated seismic probes, and huge rigs to some of the most forbidding places on the planet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Greenland. Corporate boardrooms gushed with confidence. “operates at the frontiers of the energy industry,” the company announced in its annual report. “We are exceptionally well placed to sustain our success in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico over the long term.” The economic message from all of this exploration still holds true: True world is not running out of oil—it is running out of easy oil. By using the new technology, remote stashes of oil long dismissed as too difficult or expensive to plumb are within reach. Innovative prospecting techniques like three-dimensional sonar, which emits sound waves from multiple angles, help discovery crews see through opaque and shifting layers of geological salt to pinpoint oil hidden four miles or more beneath the Gulf of Mexico and of the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa. Ultra-strong flexible pipes, remote ow-control valves, and vibration-resistant drill rigs can protect the prospecting equipment against corrosion, thermalshock, and crushing water pressure at the ocean floor. The environmental message of the worst of shore oil spill on record is less clear and still unfolding. On November the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that more than,birds, sea turtles, and mammals had died within the spill area—probably a substantial under count. at same day, a research vessel seven miles from the spill site discovered dozens of communities of dead and dying coral. “We can’t begin to fathom what the long-term effects on the marine food chain will be is remains a giant, uncontrolled science experiment, with birds and all the communities that depend on the Gulf as the unwitting subjects,” stated Bancroft, chief scientist for the National Audubon Society. atincludes the human communities: was facing some damage claims by businesses and individuals in the Gulf region. A substantial but unknown portion of the oil from the Deep water Horizon well never made it to the surface but remained trapped in the ocean’s mid waters. Here the news is more murky, though perhaps more encouraging. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ecologist Terry Hazen led a study, published in Science in October, that uncovered new species of oil-guzzling bacteria with genes that allowed them to in the cold, high-pressure conditions of an oil plume feet beneath the surface. Such microbes act as a natural cleanup crew. “ e Gulf is a great place for these bacteria because it has more natural oil seeps thanany other place in the world,” Hazen says. “When the spill began, they didn’t need an acclimation period.” Politicians were quick to declare their own lessons from the Deep water Horizon blowout. Never again, they vowed, would the planet be forced to sit by, powerless, while oil execs confessed—after the fact—that stopping a leak at such depths is like performing “open-heart surgery at , feet in the dark,” as America’s chairman and president,Lamar McKay, told News about the early attempt to plug the well by triggering the failed blow out preventerSteven Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, has no illusions aboutwhat it will take to dislodgeoil as the world’s transportationfuel of choice (see page). “It won’t happen overnight;it won’t happen evenin a decade,” he says. “It’sgoing to be several decades,so we have to start thinkingabout this now. You couldsay this is a wake-up call
2. FIRST SYNTHETIC ORGANISM CREATED
No one could accuse genome pioneer J. Craig Venter of lacking chutzpah. In May 2010 he made good on another of his audacious goals, creating an arti cial living cell by synthesizing the entire genome of a bacterium and transplanting it into another. At a news conference, Venter hailed the new organism as “the rst self-replicating species…on the planet whose parent is a computer.” The breakthrough, which took years and consumed million, involved building the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides (a bacterium that infects goats) from chemicals in the laboratory and then tagging it with a gene that turns the organism blue.
Venter’s team transplanted the fabricated genome into a closely related bacterium that had been stripped of its own , and after many attempts to jump-start the combination, managed to create an organism that morphed, over the course of a single weekend, into a blue bacterium that displayed all the characteristics of the implanted . A few environmental watchdog groups voiced concern that artificial life might somehow escape the laboratory and become an invasive species or pose dangers as yet unforeseen, and President Obama asked the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to explore the implications of Venter’s work. Scientists have already synthesized the genomes of the poliovirus and the in uenza strain, and molecular biologist Anthony Forster of Vanderbilt University acknowledges that safety is always a concern. But with proper safeguards in place, he believes that synthetic life can
provide enormous bene ts. “The success brings us closer to altering genomes in a much more designed manner—for example, creating microbes
that can help produce drugs or churn out biofuel,” he says. Venter himself has declared these applications to be his primary commercial goals. In
October he started a new company that will work with the pharmaceutical giant Novartis to create next-generation u vaccines. And Synthetic Genomics,
the company he founded in , aims to create fuel-producing microbes, including algae biofuels in a million agreement with ExxonMobil.
3. Biologist E. O. Wilson is overturning the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first
In 1975 Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson published Sociobiology, perhaps the most powerful refinement of evolutionary theory since On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory of natural selection postulated a brutal world in which individuals vied for dominance. Wilson promoted a new perspective: Social behaviors were often genetically programmed into species to help them survive, he said, with altruism— self-destructive behavior performed for the benefit of others—bred into their bones.
In the context of Darwinian selection, such selflessness hardly made sense. If you sacrificed your life for another and extinguished your genes, wouldn’t the engine of evolution simply pass you by? Wilson resolved the paradox by drawing on the theory of kin selection. According to this way of thinking, “altruistic” individuals could emerge victorious because the genes that they share with kin would be passed on. Since the whole clan is included in the genetic victory of a few, the phenomenon of beneficial altruism came to be known as “inclusive fitness.” By the 1990s it had become a core concept of biology, sociology, even pop psychology. So the scientific world quaked last August when Wilson renounced the theory that he had made famous. He and two Harvard colleagues, Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita, reported in Nature that the mathematical construct on which inclusive fitness was based crumbles under closer scrutiny. The new work indicates that self-sacrifice to protect a relation’s genes does not drive evolution. In human terms, family is not so important after all; altruism emerges to protect social groups whether they are kin or not. When people compete against each other they are selfish, but when group selection becomes important, then the altruism characteristic of human societies kicks in, Wilson says. We may be the only species intelligent enough to strike a balance between individual and group-level selection, but we are far from perfect at it. The conflict between the different levels may produce the great dramas of our species: the alliances, the love affairs, and the wars.
4. CLIMATE SCIENCE’S BIG CHILL
In 2010 climate researches struggled to move past the controversy that had rocked their community the year before. The accusation was incendiary: that scientists had grossly exaggerated the case for global warming by manipulating their data. e evidence was murky: more than , e-mails and documents exchanged by leading climate scientists, which had been hacked from their computers. But the verdict, as delivered by five separate investigations, was clear: e accused scientists were exonerated of any misconduct. ree British investigations focused on the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, site of the stolen e-mails and a leading center for studying global warming. Meanwhile, two American panels examined the integrity of Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher at
Pennsylvania State University. All five groups concluded that none of the scientists
had violated academic standards. “We nd that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” declared a report headed by Sir Muir Russell, chair of one of the British investigations.
Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, up about percent over the past half century. John Houghton, the former head of the science working group of the
says to limit the worst the effects of climate change in the decades ahead, greenhouse-gas emissions will have to peak before . Unless major strides happen quickly, there seems little chance of that happening. “ The global warming story is unequivocal, really,”he says. “It will be a major problem for the next generation.”
5. FAMILY GENOMIC S LINKS DNA TO DISEASE
A decade ago sequencing the DNA in person’s entire genome cost up to billion, a price so prohibitive that only a few genetics pioneers had the honor of having it done. In the cost per genome tumbled to less than , , making it possible to study variations within a single family. Almost immediately such familial genome sequencing proved its value, uncovering mutations responsible for diseases caused by defects in a single gene. “ There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of diseases falling into this category. is approach will allow us to very quickly nd the genetic culprit,” says Leroy Hood, a geneticist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Earlier the efforts to hunt down disease-causing genes— so-called genomewide association studies—frequently came up empty-handed because medical researchers had to take cost-saving shortcuts.
Instead of trolling an individual’s entire genome, they limited their search to regions where variations are most often seen across large populations. “It was assumed that common variants might be responsible for common diseases, but many diseases turn out to have many differentiation rare variants at their root,” says James Lupski, a medical geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “ It’s the only way we can get at these rare variants.” Lupski himself su ers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy, a rare hereditary disorder that reduces sensation in the limbs. Although neither of his parents had the condition, three of his seven siblings are also a ected by it.
“For years we’ve been looking for the gene and mutation behind my family’s neuropathy, but we never found the variant,” he says. then, in 2010 , collaborating with his colleague Richard Gibbs and other Baylor geneticists, Lupski sequenced his own genome —and “Boom! We found it,” he says. (Each of his parents, it turns out, carried a di erent recessive mutation of the same gene. Consequently, only their children who inherited one from each parent developed the disorder.) Other groups are ending similar success with whole genome sequencing. A study led by Hood in collaboration with the University of Washington and the University of Utah sequenced the entire gene responsible was unknown until Hood’s team identifed a recessive gene inherited from both parents. If you could diagnose the disease in utero, you might be able to provide preventive drugs before symptoms appeared, Hood says. Still unclear is whether whole-genome sequencing will work as well at identifying the culprits for cancer, heart disease, and other disorders
believed to involve multiple genes rather than a single mutation. Progress may be slower on that front, Duke University geneticist David Goldstein says.
But even when the genetic mechanism is more complex, he adds, the new approach might yield insights into underlying disease processes that could
pave the way for more finely targeted treatments
Instead of trolling an individual’s entire genome, they limited their search to regions where variations are most often seen across large populations. “It was assumed that common variants might be responsible for common diseases, but many diseases turn out to have many differentiation rare variants at their root,” says James Lupski, a medical geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “ It’s the only way we can get at these rare variants.” Lupski himself su ers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy, a rare hereditary disorder that reduces sensation in the limbs. Although neither of his parents had the condition, three of his seven siblings are also a ected by it.
“For years we’ve been looking for the gene and mutation behind my family’s neuropathy, but we never found the variant,” he says. then, in 2010 , collaborating with his colleague Richard Gibbs and other Baylor geneticists, Lupski sequenced his own genome —and “Boom! We found it,” he says. (Each of his parents, it turns out, carried a di erent recessive mutation of the same gene. Consequently, only their children who inherited one from each parent developed the disorder.) Other groups are ending similar success with whole genome sequencing. A study led by Hood in collaboration with the University of Washington and the University of Utah sequenced the entire gene responsible was unknown until Hood’s team identifed a recessive gene inherited from both parents. If you could diagnose the disease in utero, you might be able to provide preventive drugs before symptoms appeared, Hood says. Still unclear is whether whole-genome sequencing will work as well at identifying the culprits for cancer, heart disease, and other disorders
believed to involve multiple genes rather than a single mutation. Progress may be slower on that front, Duke University geneticist David Goldstein says.
But even when the genetic mechanism is more complex, he adds, the new approach might yield insights into underlying disease processes that could
pave the way for more finely targeted treatments
6. ATTACK OF THE BEDBUGS
Bed Bugs are not staying in the bed,Over the past year.The parasites have infested the movie theaters,departmental stores even Victoria’s Secret. In New York City, complaints about bedbugs more than doubled between and . In September the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency issued a joint paper informing the public how to combat these pests. § Researchers blame the rapid spread of bedbugs on increased international travel and the bugs’ growing resistance to certain pesticides.
The ban on DDT probably also played a role. DDT sticks around for a long time in the environment; this made it particularly e ective against bedbugs, which can live a year without feeding. Whatever the reason for the invasion, we weren’t ready for it. “No one since the s has had bedbugs on his mind,” says Louis Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. “Public education was lacking, doctors didn’t know the symptoms of bites, and exterminators were treating them like cockroach infestations. is was a new insect to understand.” e bedbug’s preference for remote hiding places, a key to its proliferation, may have something to do with its sex life. Bedbugs procreate through “traumatic insemination”: e males painfully stab the females through the abdomen, depositing semen in their body cavity. Females tend to disperse farther from a bed than male bugs do; the theory is that they are eeing their suitors. Even without DDT, a good exterminator can rid a home of bedbugs, but the price is steep: about , to clear out a two-bedroom apartment.
7. THE MAP OF EVERYTHING
In July the European Space Agency released a new map showing the universe in its infancy, 13.7 billion years ago—just 300,000 years after the Big Bang. In this full-sky image, created with data from the new Planck space telescope, red and orange areas represent primordial lumps that gave rise to giant clusters of galaxies. The blue and white zones comprise very different signals, mostly emissions from relatively nearby clouds of gas and dust in our galaxy. Planck scientists plan to strip out those local features to get an even clearer picture of the early evolution of the cosmos. A full release of data is coming in two years
8. OBESITY REACHES EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS
The rate of OBESITY in AMERICAN adults have supposed to have fallen to percent or less by now. But not one state has achieved this goal, set forth a decade ago by the Department of Health and Human Services in its report “Healthy People .”
In August the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced negative progress: e number of states reporting a percent obesity rate has jumped from zero to nine. “Obesity rates in some states are still screaming up the curve,” says J. Michael Gaziano, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who dubbed our era the “Age of Obesity and Inactivity” in a January editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Mississippi now has the highest rate of obesity in the country, with . percent of adults a ected, according to the .
Other states topping percent include Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alabama. Colorado had the lowest obesity rate in the nation, at . percent of adults—still above the target. Fighting back against this grim trend, public-health officials have begun to embrace the sort of tough measures previously wielded against cigarette smoking. e most notable success last year came with the passage of a measure in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of requiring nearly all chain restaurants to include calorie counts on their menus. On the research front, meanwhile, investigators are making some progress in grasping obesity’s causes.
A provocative study published in Science in April suggests that a change in the bacterial population of the gut contributes to the risk of metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by elevated weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood fat. Researchers led by Emory University pathologist Andrew Gewirtz found that mice genetically de cient in an immune system receptor have altered gut bacteria, eat more than normal mice do, and develop features of metabolic syndrome. However, Gewirtz says it is “unlikely that there will be a single causative bacterium for obesity as there is for ulcers.”
In fact, despite the surge in obesity, no progress was seen this year on approved medical treatments available to consumers struggling to lose weight. The Food and Drug Administration refused to approve two investigational appetite suppressants, Qnexa and lorcaserin, primarily out of safety concerns. Another weight-loss drug approved back in , Meridia, was pulled from the market under pressure from the FDA after studies showed it raises cardiovascular risk. And clearly, most current approaches to dieting are not effective: Up to percent of people who lose weight eventually regain it.
“We have to find medications that help us keep the weight off after we’ve lost it,” says research pediatrician Michael Rosenbaum of Columbia University, who is studying the use of the fat-signaling hormone leptin for just that purpose. Whoever finds the drug that can cure the obesity epidemic will surely end up rich as well as thin.
9. WORLD’S FIRST CYBER-WEAPON
Mysterious hackers create a malicious computer code designed to seize control of critical equipment worldwide. It turns out it really happened. In June a computer security rm in Belarus found a sophisticated, aggressive, self-replicating program, or worm, on a client’s computers in Iran. e program was designed to attack and sabotage control systems used in manufacturing
facilities, power grids, pipelines, and nuclear plants. No one knows where the worm
was created or what it was targeting. Researchers know only that it was capable of causing physical damage; for instance, it could make a motor rev too quickly and even blow up. “Using something in the cyberworld to control something in the physical world is something we’ve never seen before,” says Liam O Murchu of the computer security company Symantec. “We’ve never seen any industrial control system being attacked before, and we’ve never seen such an advanced threat that needed so many different skills to come together.” Since rst reported in June, the
Stuxnet worm—which some call the world’s rst “cyberweapon”— has spread to , machines in more than countries, though most are in Iran. Only a few machines in the United States have been infected.
The worm spreads via infected ash drives and other means. Once loaded onto a computer,
Stuxnet searches for industrial control software made by Siemens, called Simatic WinCC/
Step . If Simatic software is not on the machine, the worm looks for vulnerable computers on the
network to which it could spread. But if the software is present and con gured a certain way, the worm begins its dirty task, intercepting legitimate commands that control devices such as valves and pressure gauges and substituting potentially destructive ones in their place. Computer and control system security professionals like Ralph Langner, who is based in Germany, believe the Stuxnet worm was targeting Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, or both. Iran has acknowledged that personal computers belonging to employees at Bushehr were infected by the worm but has insisted that computers running the nuclear facility itself remained unharmed. Those reports cannot be veri ed, however.
Langner and other security experts believe that if the worm successfully hits its target, its victim would most likely never admit as much. e attackers
who created and launched the malicious software also remain unknown. Langner and others say the malware’s sophistication points to one or more well-
nanced nation-states such as Israel or the United States, two countries with motive and the ability to conduct the attack. (Neither country has o cially commented on the Stuxnet attack.) Those unknowns hint at the magnitude of the dangers that may follow in Stuxnet’s wake, Langner says. Now that Stuxnet has shown it is possible for a targeted piece of software to take command of an industrial control system, and now that the malware has been released on the Internet for other hackers to study, the bar has been lowered for destructive attacks on other control systems—whether at critical infrastructure or an industrial factory. “ e clock is ticking,” Langner says. “We are going to see copycats by the beginning of 2011.”
facilities, power grids, pipelines, and nuclear plants. No one knows where the worm
was created or what it was targeting. Researchers know only that it was capable of causing physical damage; for instance, it could make a motor rev too quickly and even blow up. “Using something in the cyberworld to control something in the physical world is something we’ve never seen before,” says Liam O Murchu of the computer security company Symantec. “We’ve never seen any industrial control system being attacked before, and we’ve never seen such an advanced threat that needed so many different skills to come together.” Since rst reported in June, the
Stuxnet worm—which some call the world’s rst “cyberweapon”— has spread to , machines in more than countries, though most are in Iran. Only a few machines in the United States have been infected.
The worm spreads via infected ash drives and other means. Once loaded onto a computer,
Stuxnet searches for industrial control software made by Siemens, called Simatic WinCC/
Step . If Simatic software is not on the machine, the worm looks for vulnerable computers on the
network to which it could spread. But if the software is present and con gured a certain way, the worm begins its dirty task, intercepting legitimate commands that control devices such as valves and pressure gauges and substituting potentially destructive ones in their place. Computer and control system security professionals like Ralph Langner, who is based in Germany, believe the Stuxnet worm was targeting Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, or both. Iran has acknowledged that personal computers belonging to employees at Bushehr were infected by the worm but has insisted that computers running the nuclear facility itself remained unharmed. Those reports cannot be veri ed, however.
Langner and other security experts believe that if the worm successfully hits its target, its victim would most likely never admit as much. e attackers
who created and launched the malicious software also remain unknown. Langner and others say the malware’s sophistication points to one or more well-
nanced nation-states such as Israel or the United States, two countries with motive and the ability to conduct the attack. (Neither country has o cially commented on the Stuxnet attack.) Those unknowns hint at the magnitude of the dangers that may follow in Stuxnet’s wake, Langner says. Now that Stuxnet has shown it is possible for a targeted piece of software to take command of an industrial control system, and now that the malware has been released on the Internet for other hackers to study, the bar has been lowered for destructive attacks on other control systems—whether at critical infrastructure or an industrial factory. “ e clock is ticking,” Langner says. “We are going to see copycats by the beginning of 2011.”
10. EARLY DIAGNOSIS FOR ALZHEIMER’S
Part of what makes ALZHEIMer’s disease so pernicious is its stealth. Traditionally, it could be identi
ed with certainty only by an autopsy. at changed last year, when researchers used two tools to diagnose the
disease with nearly percent accuracy in living subjects, a feat that might ultimately allow patients to seek drug treatment before their condition becomes too advanced. In the rst method, doctors inject a radioactive dye that binds to amyloid plaque, a damaging protein that accumulates in patients’ brains and is the hallmark of the disease; then they detect the dye with a scan of the brain. Last summer researchers at Avid
Radiopharmaceuticals in Philadelphia used the technique to identify of Alzheimer’s patients, as later con
rmed by autopsy. Given that percent of people currently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s turn out to be
su ering from something else— notably depression,
In the second technique, physicians insert a syringe into the spinal column, with draw cerebro spinal uid, and analyze it for the presence of amyloid and another disease-related protein known as tau.Th e method was con
rmed in August, when University of Pennsylvania scientists found the markers in percent of cognitively impaired patients with the disease.“Successful drug development, imaging, and biomarkers go hand in hand,” says neurology researcher Michael Wolfe of Brigham and Women’s Hospital
and Harvard Medical School. “ ese diagnostic tools are a major step forward. Finally people are being identifed earlier and the right people are being
selected for clinical trials to e ectively test these drugs.”
11. Our galaxy may be home to billions of planets similar to our own
The universe is looking a lot less lonely these days, and Geoff Marcy can take a lot of credit for that. An astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, he is leading the search for exoplanets: worlds that orbit other stars. His research has uncovered many oddities, such as hot Jupiters (gas balls that bake in thousand- degree heat) and backward-orbiting objects, but he also found the first multiplanet system that is roughly analogous to the solar system. Last fall he estimated that, judging from his observations, our galaxy may contain tens of billions of planets roughly the size and mass of Earth. And now, as coinvestigator on NASA’s Kepler space telescope, he is close to finding some of them. In February, Kepler will release its first major set of observations; early word is that the data will include tentative identification ofseveral hundred planets that are just slightly larger than our own.
12. Brain Map Shows You Think Like a Worm
Biologists have taken another whack at the human ego, showing that our brain’s cerebral cortex—the seat of higher thought—is eerily similar to a clump of neurons inside the head of the lowly marine ragworm. The ragworm’s brain, which evolved some 600 million years ago, is so similar to the cortex that humans and worms must share a common ancestor.Scientists knew that fruit flies, cockroaches, and other simple organisms have sensory processors
that resemble a cortex, but these were “always interpreted as a striking example of convergent evolution of unrelated structures,” says molecular
biologist Raju Tomer, who led the study at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany. To test that idea in the ragworm, Tomer used a technique he had developed to examine the complex brains of small creatures with unprecedented clarity: He created a high-resolution map of the worm’s
brain cells according to the genes they express, not just their shape and location. When Tomer compared the worm’s cells with those in a vertebrate cerebral cortex, he found they were too similar to be of independent origin. That result, published in an article in the September issue of Cell, challenges the standard notion that the ability to think evolved from complex vertebrate behaviors like predation, Tomer says. Thought now appears to spring from something far more basic, he argues, like the ability “to distinguish between food and nonfood”—a feat the ragworm accomplishes with aplomb.
that resemble a cortex, but these were “always interpreted as a striking example of convergent evolution of unrelated structures,” says molecular
biologist Raju Tomer, who led the study at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany. To test that idea in the ragworm, Tomer used a technique he had developed to examine the complex brains of small creatures with unprecedented clarity: He created a high-resolution map of the worm’s
brain cells according to the genes they express, not just their shape and location. When Tomer compared the worm’s cells with those in a vertebrate cerebral cortex, he found they were too similar to be of independent origin. That result, published in an article in the September issue of Cell, challenges the standard notion that the ability to think evolved from complex vertebrate behaviors like predation, Tomer says. Thought now appears to spring from something far more basic, he argues, like the ability “to distinguish between food and nonfood”—a feat the ragworm accomplishes with aplomb.
13. Bats Devastated by Deadly Plague
Five years after a caver in New York State first stumbled across a group of bats with white noses (including several dead ones), the disease known as white-nose syndrome has killed more than a million of the animals. Last year Geomyces destructans, the fungus thought to cause the syndrome, stalked through 14 states and two Canadian provinces, striking nine species of bats in more than 160 caves and mines. The fungus seems to disrupt hibernation, draining the
bats’ energy. Once the disease takes hold in an area, it kills about 85 percent of the bats there within a year. Using data from 23 sites, Winifred Frick, an ecologist at Boston University, helped model the disease’s impact on little brown bats. In August she reported that the species could vanish from the northeastern
United States within 16 years. The ecological consequences could include more mosquitoes and other undesirable insects that the bats eat.
bats’ energy. Once the disease takes hold in an area, it kills about 85 percent of the bats there within a year. Using data from 23 sites, Winifred Frick, an ecologist at Boston University, helped model the disease’s impact on little brown bats. In August she reported that the species could vanish from the northeastern
United States within 16 years. The ecological consequences could include more mosquitoes and other undesirable insects that the bats eat.
14. Super-material Gets Supersized
Graphene—a superstrong, transparent, conductive material made up of a single layer of carbon atoms—nabbed the 2010 Nobel Prize for the physicists
who isolated it. And no wonder: The material has the potential to revolutionize electronics if it can be produced in sufficient size and quantity. Last June researchers in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore announced a major step in that direction. They created sheets of graphene 30 inches across (compared with pieces of just a few inches previously) and used them to build a working touch screen for the first time. Materials scientist Jong- Hyun Ahn and chemist Byung Hee Hong of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea report that their graphene sheet—which they grew on copper foil—is both a better transparent conductor and a more flexible material than indium tin oxide, currently the leading choice in applications such as liquid crystal displays. To create the functional touch screen, they stacked the carbon sheets and attached them to a thin plastic film. Hong says that large-scale manufacturing facilities should
help drive down the cost of production, and touch screens based on graphene may be commercially available in as little as two years. Other potential applications include better flat-panel displays and solar cells.
who isolated it. And no wonder: The material has the potential to revolutionize electronics if it can be produced in sufficient size and quantity. Last June researchers in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore announced a major step in that direction. They created sheets of graphene 30 inches across (compared with pieces of just a few inches previously) and used them to build a working touch screen for the first time. Materials scientist Jong- Hyun Ahn and chemist Byung Hee Hong of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea report that their graphene sheet—which they grew on copper foil—is both a better transparent conductor and a more flexible material than indium tin oxide, currently the leading choice in applications such as liquid crystal displays. To create the functional touch screen, they stacked the carbon sheets and attached them to a thin plastic film. Hong says that large-scale manufacturing facilities should
help drive down the cost of production, and touch screens based on graphene may be commercially available in as little as two years. Other potential applications include better flat-panel displays and solar cells.
15. Supervaccine Could Eliminate Flu
Every flu season, vaccine makers must bet on which strain of influenza A will pose the greatest threat to the public, and millions of Americans must decide whether to get a shot. In August, virologist Gary Nabel at the National Insti tutes of Health (NIH) announced progress toward a universal flu vaccine; two shots of it could provide years of protection from every known influenza A virus. “We use a prime-boost strategy, meaning that we immunize with two vehicles that deliver the vaccine in different ways,” Nabel says. In their experimental treatment, he and his colleagues
injected mice, ferrets, and monkeys with viral DNA, causing their muscle cells to produce hemagglutinin, a protein found on the surface of all flu viruses. The animals’ immune systems then began making antibodies that latch onto the protein and disable the virus.
The researchers followed the DNA injection with a traditional seasonal flu shot, which contains dead viruses. This one-two punch protected the test subjects against influenza A viruses that had emerged in 1934 and 2007, and other experiments showed that the antibodies it generated successfully neutralized a wide variety of flu strains. Nabel’s colleagues at the NIH are already testing similar approaches in humans.
injected mice, ferrets, and monkeys with viral DNA, causing their muscle cells to produce hemagglutinin, a protein found on the surface of all flu viruses. The animals’ immune systems then began making antibodies that latch onto the protein and disable the virus.
The researchers followed the DNA injection with a traditional seasonal flu shot, which contains dead viruses. This one-two punch protected the test subjects against influenza A viruses that had emerged in 1934 and 2007, and other experiments showed that the antibodies it generated successfully neutralized a wide variety of flu strains. Nabel’s colleagues at the NIH are already testing similar approaches in humans.